Identity Theft in a Life With Chronic Pain

There are some very silly commercials playing on TV for a security and identity theft company. It’s a good company, and after you’ve watched it a few times you realize the effectiveness of the obvious as they show masked thieves robbing the couple in the commercial of everything they own as the couple talk to each other on the phone in obvious oblivion. It does make one want to call and order identity theft insurance because it’s one of life’s events that doesn’t occur to us until it is too late and has actually happened. Those of us who have been dumped into a life with chronic pain know all about identity theft.

I don’t need to tell those of you who have been reading this blog for any length of time how much each of us have lost. The dynamic that concerns me today is how to keep ourselves from losing any more of life’s vitality, joy, and awareness as the days tick away. Like the couple in the commercial, we can sometimes be oblivious to our behavior as well as the choices we make along this road. I’d like to share three subjects with you: choices, opportunities, and the elephant in the room.

One of my favorite poets, Robert Frost, wrote a brilliant poem about choices, let me share it with you now.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,
I doubted I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Most of us did not have a choice before landing where we are now with our health in disarray or perhaps some did; but it is what it is, and now we can control our behavior, our choices, and the roads we choose to travel. Certainly we all travel on the road less traveled by, and it has made a dramatic difference in our lives. We often regret, grieve, and mourn, yet in doing so, we are losing the sunlight of today and the opportunities of the moment. We will never know what lay down that other road, the road not taken. Does it really matter? We have much to do on the road we’re on.

Opportunities lay all around us. We often see our altered lives as limited. Yes, they are. We see them as dead end roads — that, they most certainly are not. Neither you nor I can see what lies ahead until we walk, crawl, or wheel there. The road may be rutted, dirty, and rough, but it is the road we’re on. Chosen by us or life, it does not really matter now, does it? Opportunities for friendships, usefulness, love, and exploration lie ahead of us.

We have a most sacred opportunity to curb our emotions when necessary and behave ourselves. Sometimes I see individuals, patients, and friends who think their pain gives them license to be obnoxious, rude, and critical of others. When formed into words, these actions can hurt others who may be oblivious to what and who they are. Often we say or feel these negative reactions and they hurt us alone. We have the opportunity based on our own personal suffering to be kind, to be more understanding than most of the population, and to use our anger about our lot in life for positive purposes. We can still reach out a hand in friendship or helpfulness, can we not? We can still be a caring friend and listen and not always speak of our own ills. Those of us on the road less traveled need to express our dark humor toward those who treat us badly or are just ignorant of our plight, but we do have an obligation to ourselves to stop doing so before it becomes bitterness and turns around to bite us. I urge you as well as myself to turn to the beauty and the joy in life. We may need to let off steam on occasion, and it can be fun and helpful; but if we let off too much, our pot will be empty, and we’ll be lost in a world of gray dampness. Choose, instead, to go outside and pull a weed, deadhead a flower, or sit beside a beloved cat and feel the purr of their whole body as you stroke them, or the warm tongue of a dog loving you in gratitude just for who you are.

Many of us live with an enormous elephant in the room. We talk constantly about the obvious. We do need to express ourselves, yet we also need to find the fine line between expression and driving others from our lives. I learned long ago it was too much for my husband my constant queries about why and how and decided it was better for both of us if I save my complaining for the “big stuff.” Our spouses, lovers, and friends are never going to completely understand that elephant we live with, and that’s because they can’t feel what we feel. It’s enough that they try to understand. Robert Frost wrote a small contribution to this subject that I’d like to share with you today.

The Secret Sits

We dance around in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Perhaps, it’s for each of us to find the secret within our own lives as we attempt to keep our true identity along the way, this way of life with chronic pain.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sue Falkner-Wood

Sue Falkner-Wood is a retired registered nurse living in Astoria, Ore., with her husband, who is also an R.N. Sue left nursing in 1990 due to chronic pain and other symptoms related to what was eventually...read more